After speaking at the Digitally Engaged Learning Conference, Anna Frants attends Future Mind International Symposium in London. Co-organized by Kyoto University & Goldsmiths University of London, the symposium gathers artists and scientists to discuss art and technology in the future.

Future Mind International Symposium takes place on September 18 at the Stuart Hall Building, Goldsmith, University of London. It covers the themes of art, science, future technology, VR and psychology, with sessions on:

Art of Future, Future City and Looking for Japan

Communication of the Future, Vision and Mind

VR Art and Imaging of the Future

AI, Art Critic of the Future

Future Mind

It’s worth mentioning that opening remarks and a session on VR art is given by artist and professor William Latham, who presented one of his mesmerising works Mutator VR at CYFEST10 and HYBRIS exhibitions organised by CYLAND MediaArtLab.

Project Torino is a research project from Microsoft Research Cambridge. Researchers have designed a physical programming language and scheme of work (lessons) for teaching the primary school computing curriculum to learners regardless of their level of vision.

Learners put together pods to create code that plays music, stories, or poetry. An accompanying app provides a self-directed scheme of work that learners can work through under adult supervision. Learners are gradually introduced to reading or listening to their code in a textual form to support transition to coding in secondary school.

This scheme of work includes concept introduction, a range of activities, and challenges, and ways to assess knowledge and understanding. It covers all of the major concepts in the primary computing curriculum, including: sequences, repetition, selection, variables, (and threads). In addition to these basic coding concepts, it also provides a number of challenges to push computational thinking. Not least, it encourages creative play with computation. The scheme of work is accompanied by a set of tutorials and a teacher resource guide.

Given the high demand, Microsoft Research Cambridge is considering to run the Project Torino Beta in both the autumn and winter terms of the school year (2017 – 2018) in the UK.

In this interview, Alexandra Dementieva shares her thoughts on the purpose of art and technologies, her inspirations and the use of technologies to engage an audience. Her interactive installation projects attempt to widen the mind’s potential for perception using different production materials: computers, video projections, soundtracks, slides, photography, etc. The projects explore the spectator’s depths of perceptual experience and the interaction of the individual spectator with the exhibition as well as with other visitors. The subject of an installation or its production method becomes less important to her than the mind of the user. Thus the latter becomes the center of the project or the main actor in the performance.

Anna Frants shares her report of the recently visited exhibition devoted to Fred Forest at Centre Pompidou, Paris. Fred Forest, a French new media artist, is especially dear to us as an ever-inspiring CYFEST (CYBERFEST) participant. View the report below:

Fred Forest with Bernard Blistène, Director of the Department of Cultural Development at the Centre Pompidou Fred Forest with Anna Frants and Alexandra Dementieva

Fred Forest is “media-man” and pioneer of a participatory, sociological art based on the use of modern and contemporary tools of communication takes up the notion of “territory” to organise a survey of his work as a whole. It is modelled on the narrative of his Territoire du m² artistique, created in 1977 – the same year as the Centre Pompidou – which follows the artist’s trajectory from his screen-paintings and other spaces to be filled in to his media-critical actions-performances on territories both local and planetary. Inhabiting a space between the real and the imaginary, the exhibition presents for the first time a selection of archive documents and previously unseen works, offering visitors an opportunity to discover or find out more about the career of this self-taught artist, pursued outside the institutions – 40 years of agitation and commitment!

Visit the exhibition

Transmission Video Art Festival invites competition entries from around the world on the theme“We Are All in this Together – A Road Map Through a Post-Truth Art World”.

Does art have anything to contribute to the post-truth, post-democracy world? Is it the time forus to start producing noise, politicizing aesthetic practices or just turn full-time towards political activism? In the era of post-truth politics, alternative facts and fake news campaigns undermining ourdemocracies, we would like to invite experimental film makers and video artists to take a standin the overwhelming ethical ambiguity of our time.

The competition is open to all forms of moving image-based artworks on a single-screen. Entries selected by our international jury of experts will be screened during the TransmissionVideo Art Festival taking place simultaneously in Karlsruhe (DE), Warsaw (PL) and Kassel (DE). You will find a short description of our event and its concept online under www.transmission-festival.eu.

Art Fair Suomi is a unique meeting place for the public, artists and art professionals. It is an international contemporary-art Festival with a sales exhibition of contemporary art and various visual-art events: discussions, screenings, and more.

Etude 1 along with the recently recovered TV Clock willdebut in the exhibition Watch This! Revelations in Media Art, whichopens at the Smithsonian American Art Museum April 24 and runs throughSeptember 7, 2015. The show includes works by Cory Arcangel, Hans Breder, Takeshi Murata, Bruce Nauman and Bill Viola, among dozens of others, and will include 16 mm films, computer-driven cinema, closed-circuit installations, digital animation and video games.

April 1, Tessart, a new exhibition place for art and technology, opened in St. Petersburg. Located on Karavannaya ulitsa 1, at the city centre, it will focus on promoting emerging artists working with interactive and immersive technologies. See the report from the opening below by CYLAND’s Anton Khlabov.

CYLAND MediaArtLab artist Alexandra Dementieva shares her video report from Iconomania exhibition that has recently opened at MAIF SOCIAL CLUB in Paris, France. This report is available below:

The exhibition questions the place and the treatment of the image in our contemporary society. It features 18 new media artists curated by Florence Guionneau-Joie. More information at https://www.maifsocialclub.fr.

Iconomania on display at MAIF SOCIAL CLUB in Paris until March 31, 2017.

Digital Arts Studios (DAS) is the only organisation in Northern Ireland to offer a residency programme for local and nationally based visual artists who wish to work with digital media and is one of only two organisations in Northern Ireland to offer an international residency programme.

The International Residency programme is open to artists based outside Ireland and the United Kingdom. The next International Residency will run from June to July 2017. The DAS International Residency enables artists to come to Northern Ireland for a 2-month period inorder to develop their artistic practice, encouraged by peer residents, and supported by theresources and facilities of the Digital Arts Studios.

International artists are provided with self-catering shared living accommodation in Belfast, receive astipend of £200 per month and are exempt from residency fees.

CYLAND MediaArtLab artist Alexandra Dementieva shares a video report from Artefact Expo in Leuven Belgium. Artefact is a themed exhibition and festival on contemporary visual arts, current events and societal challenges. In 2017, Artefact looks at the Act of Magic. What does magic mean today? Which role does it play as a social phenomenon? How is it used as a metaphor? And how do contemporary artists tackle the subject? From poetry to strategy, from magical object to obscure systems, from harmless distraction to manipulation: the artists in The Act of Magic investigate what enchants us today.

OUR EXHIBITIONS

CYLAND supports production and exhibit of New Media Art year round.

Emerging and established, local or international – selected artists are provided resources from technicians to equipment and professional development. Collaboration is encouraged via a residency program. Read more >

OUR FESTIVAL - CYFEST (Formerly called “CYBERFEST”)

CYLAND began their annual festival in 2007, in St Petersburg, Russia. Over the following editions, this event grew to be housed across the world's most prestigious institutions.

IN RUSSIA
Showcasing over 80 artists from 20 countries in a single festival, CYLAND is known as the force behind the original and biggest New Media event in Russia. It is held annually at The State Hermitage Museum.

GLOBALLY
In 2013, CYLAND expanded the 7th annual edition of their festival for the first time outside of Russia opening additional potential for discourse among the global innovation community.